By Sue Pleming
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
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WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - The United States criticized Somalia's government on Wednesday for supporting the ouster of the country's dissident speaker of parliament and said the act was at odds with the spirit of reconciliation.
Assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, urged Somalia's transitional government to be more "inclusive" and not to dwell on the past.
Earlier on Wednesday, Somalia's parliament ousted Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who for two years opposed the president and prime minister and angered them late last year with peace overtures to Islamist rivals.
"The point about the speaker is that what happened in the past should be very different from what happens going forward. And the going forward requires one thing, it requires reconciliation," Frazer said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
"The speaker is a member of the transitional federal institutions ... the symbol of the president and the prime minister backing a move to push him out is counter to that spirit of reconciliation."
Adan's ouster is seen by many as a move by President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi to consolidate power and exact revenge against him.
"We are advising the government, as supporters of the government, to demonstrate something different going forward," Frazer said.
Idd Beddel Mohamed, the charge d'affaires at the U.N. permanent mission of Somalia, said at the same event that he supported Adan's dismissal and asked Frazer to do the same.
"What goes around comes around," he said of the speaker. "I hope the international community will respect this decision and the sovereignty of Somalia."
Frazer said her government respected the sovereignty of Somalia, but that the speaker's ouster would have a negative impact.
However, she said recent statements by the speaker were "not helpful." "The speaker himself has to do more to reach out," she said.
The weak transitional government was pushed out in June from the capital Mogadishu but was restored to the capital after Ethiopian troops helped with the ouster of the Islamists before the New Year.
Frazer said the Islamists should not be allowed to be "reconstituted" as a political entity, but she urged the transitional government to reach out to moderate Islamists as well as business and clan leaders and women's groups.
"This dialogue must move forward very quickly," she said.
Source: Reuters, Jan 17, 2007